HiBAiSHi

I spent the past weekend at Oxford and saw friends from high school that I hadn’t seen in years. Caitie Craumer goes to GWU now and is studying at Royal Holloway, all the way on the other side of London close to Windsor Castle. Matt Franks goes to Columbia and is spending the year at Oxford, and the second I arrived with Caitie he asked if I needed a place to stay. The rooms there are gigantic, and he was nice enough to lend us his floor.

We ate brunch at the covered market, an awesome place about 10 meters from Matt’s dorm. Caitie came with me to go sightseeing while Matt spent the day working. As soon as we got to the Oxford Castle, Caitie’s friend called her and told her about this ball in London that he was going to – so with less than two hours to find a dress and shoes, she set off in the mall and went to get ready for her ball. Ridiculous!

Ray and I visited our friend Josh Parker at Pembroke College who confessed that the first few weeks at Oxford had been so great that he wished he went there instead. Being there for only a few hours made it difficult for me to disagree with him. He gave us a tour of Oxford and showed us the Great Hall where Harry Potter was filmed and at the same time broke the news about Dumbledore’s homosexuality. When we got back, we heard grunting noises from a guy down the hall and he explained that this guy from Cornell (Ever heard of it?) is so strange that once he was watching TV by himself with a bottle of gin and invited someone to come over and watch with him. When that person went over, he noticed that it was a tape of the Cornell guy naked and covered in peanut butter while wrestling with another guy naked and covered in whipped cream. Rumor has it, that was only the beginning of the video. The party hadn’t even started yet.

Afterwards. we went out to dinner looking for a place to go with a group of 15, but realized that due to the rugby finals that day, everything was packed. We settled for a food truck and ate doner kebabs. We went to watch the game and noticed all sorts of “yobs” everywhere, from old guys singing and farting to this creeper who just kept taking pictures of everybody cheering and not watching any of the game at all. Very strange. England lost, to no one’s surprise, and Josh and his friends left to go to a union party while we went to hang out with Matt.

Back at Exeter College, Matt bought drinks and even fixed the lighting and we talked as if we hadn’t seen each other in over two years. Oh, right. Talking to both Matt and Caitie made me realize just how bad I have been at keeping in touch with people form high school, as there became a point with some people who I used to write letters to where everything would stop and we would stop being friends.

Anyway, later into the night while we were learning the basics of Russian from Matt’s friend Joe, the idea came up to go down the trap door in his dorm room meant to serve as a fire exit and climb down to take a cell phone. Just for fun. Of course, security came up and gave us a “yellowcard,” whatever that means. In all seriousness, I think breaking into someone’s room and taking their phone was less offensive to the security at Oxford then stepping on the grass. Only the most prestigious university in the world.